#AND YES THAT MURDEROUS FUCKING ROBOT ON THE RIGHT IS A RECENT COMFORT CHARACTER OF MINE (guess why)

[prixoruno]

the other thing i posted to twitter this month btw

[popculturebuffet]

Jake Reviews Stuff: Star Vs: Friendenemies

Happy pride all. I’m getting ahead of this one for a number of reasons:  1) It’s pride month and this episode is one of the most shiptastic things i’ve seen with two male characters since Robochris from bravest warriors. I mean it dosen’t quite reach “Creating a skull robot of your best friend because he won’t touch you a lot to make him jealous enough to do that” levels of romantic tension but it tries. 

2) My good friend @jess-the-vampire​ is a tomco shipper, and with things being rough for her I figure she could use this sooner rather than later. 3) Shows are actually coming back with Amphibia emerging from it’s year long odinsleep the same week Close Enough finally escapes from it’s dumpster after 10,000 years to conquer earth before it gets put back in there then escapes again and marries lord zedd.. I lost the metaphor the point is I want to keep Tom train, and other star arcs I have planned, moving at a steady clip. 

So with all of that yeah, i’m ready to go. No real exposition to dump again, come on let’s go after the cut!

We open with Marco at his laptop nervous about something and Star coming into his room tangled in christmas lights... so normal day at Casa Diaz.  Anyways Marco can’t help star out of her latest self made prison because he’s preording tickets to a Mackie Hand Film Festival. Mackie Hand is Marco’s faviorite martial artist and movie star, who died performing a stunt on himself.. accidentally.. did he give himself a death punch? Is this the same universe as regular show.. please say yes.  Anyway as is natural for Marco in the first two seasons as god apparently hates him, the tickets sell out instantly and he dosen’t get them, banging his head against his laptop as Star TRIES to comfort him , saying he might still be able to get them. Marco also says “Good things don’t happen to me”

I mean just look at Season 3. Anyways tom comes in licking a rainbow snowcone for no explained reason other than they wanted to make it obvious this was the Tomco episode. Tom asks to hang out and after Star, understandably at this point given you know, the horrible date where he tried to murder her best friend and the gaslighting a few weeks back, tells him a million times no, Tom explains he’s not here for her.. he’s here for Marco. Marco, given tom’s threatned to kill him twice now and tried to at least once, isn’t biting. Tom naturally has tickets to the festival as a trump card, and assumes that time he kidnapped marco and played him in ping pong for his freedom counts as a friend hang out, and geuinely apologizes for his behavior promising not to get angry. Really while as you probalby know we DO get the reveal later he was partly doing this whole thing to finish his anger managment... I do get the sense this apology, and a lot of this is GENUINE. We’ll get more into the why in a bit, but he does seem to genuinely want to bury the hatchet.  Marco pulls star aside and, given the last two times he saw Tom, the boy had some horrible scheme up his ripped sleeves, he understandably, and as it turns out correctly, thinks Tom is once again up to some sort of scheme, star is fully on board. I have. mixed feelings about this. On the one hand STar did forgive tom for the previous episodes mess and Ponyhead for much worse and it does set up the tiny plot curnel of corn that would grow into an entire corn field of her still having some friendly feelings toward tom. But it just feels weird, even with how cahotic star can be to have her flip flop from “Stop calling me” To “You should totlaly go on a date with the guy who harassed me and tried to kill you twice now. “. Especially since next time she has an episode with Tom, She’s fully resentful of him and a bit snarky and spends and episode, in part thanks to aformentioned magical severed ponyhead, suspicious of him playing games with her head again. We’ll get there soon obviously, i’m just saying it feels mildly off. 

So Marco decides, much like bart simpson that getting where he’s going’s worth it even if he has to ride with the devil himself and reluctantly agrees. We see the inside of Tom’s carriage for the first time, and see my good personal friend dead horse again on the outside, and it’s really nice.. lit by torches because mood lighting, but similar to his room it’s plushly decorated and even has two serious speakers and according to Tom 6 flatscreens. Damn I wish I had one of those.. that and I wouldn’t have to drive since I can’t due to my anxiety. Plus who wouldn’t want a firey horse skelton sidekick? Anyways Tom offers Marco cold cereal and Marco is frank with tom, pointing out he’s suddenly being nice to Marco after never being nice to him before and understandably isn’t sure he’s even a mackie hand fan but a bit of banter and trivia shows Marco that no, Tom really seems to be telling the truth.  Tom then confides in marco that he gets why Marco didn’t belivie him: Most people dont’ get past their preconcived perceptions of him. And here the series does flesh tom out a bit: Tom admits to not having many friends.. which frames the previous two episodes in a diffrent light. Sure his actions to Star are still very much not okay... but you at least see WHY he was so obessive about her: She was probably the first real friend he had that wasn’t a casual aquantince, his own family member, or a pet. Most Mewman kids his age probably weren’t too keen to hang out with what to them was a monster, rich or not, little raicst shits. And in the underworld most people probably just did whatever he asked because they were afraid of his temper or his parents fury, even if his parents are the nicest people in the underworld. So when he lost her, Tom didn’t know how to properly react and while his first attempt to win star back was genuine, it was marred by his refusal to adress his anger or control issues that likely lead to Star dumping him in the first place. While Star’s forgivness HERE is a bit werid, her willingness to give him another shot wasn’t: Tom was SEEMINGLY genuinely trying. He was in therapy, he’d been anger free for several days and most glowingly, when a stranger karate chopped his hand off in a misguided attempt to protect star.. he got upset but instnatlly went into his coping mechanisms.  The problem was as I covered in that review.. Tom didn’t WANT to change. That’s the thing about changing: you need to both know there is a problem and WANT to fix it. And even then, as we’ll see sometimes i’ts hard. I know, i’ve had my own personal issues i’ve had to change up as years went on. It’s a slippery slope you have to constnatly climb up. And BMB era tom.. just didn’t WANT to change he just wanted to do what he thought star wanted that would get her to take him back, and couldn’t understnad why she wouldn’t just listen to him and obey, two things not in star’s vocabulary for anyone much less her ex. 

So , much like I did, rather than blame himself for screwing things up, he just saw it as Marco being in the way and tried to fix that. And so he sunk to rock bottom.. but it didn’t fix their relationship and it took Marco having an honest conversation, as someone who was also very close to her and knew her well, to get him to see that Star wasn’t going to take him back unless she wanted it.. what he was doing was selfish and self destructive.. and Tom probably realized in that moment he had to stop. He let her go, and thus as I put al ot of emphasis on last time, made his first step to being better.  And to me that’s why this makes sense as his next step: While it’s partly to fufill a checklist... you get the sense he really DOES like marco on some level. They hung out, which I do feel tom did genuinely feel was like friends hanging out instead of you know the second highest stakes game of ping pong i’ve ever seen. 

The first if your curious. So while part of this is Tom just wanting to get through anger managment for likely his parent’s sake, part of it is also him genuinely wanting to be somebody’s buddy, anybody but a bumbling butler. It’s just being Tom, he dosen’t know HOW to make friends or get them to see past who he is surface wise; a spoiled angry boy and see the inside, a nice kid who just has no idea how to talk to people beyond a surface level or understand them and we’ll see that more both in this episode and as we go. Speaking of going back in the episode proper, two bros drive up and insult Tom’s carriage also wondering if he’s going to his grandpa’s funeral. Fuck you both.. both on general principal and becaause his grandpapapapapapaaaaaaaaaaaa is alive and magnificent. 

Satan bless you Relicor. Anyways, Tom is naturally pissed at this and Marco challenges them to a race.. but eases tom off actually following them as, since this isn’t a fast and the furious movie, the police immidelty arest them and we get the blessed image above. Let’s see that again.

NOGODWHY

Not right but it’ll have to do I fear what may happen if I try again.  ONE BALLON DICK GIRAFFE LATER, our boys are on a high, as Tom finds there are things more fun than obletarating people. #tomhaskilledmultiplepeopleandisstillthebestboy. Marco is reminded of a song from his faviorite band Love Sentence, and Tom, suprisingy given his My Chemical Romance with a splash of metal astetic, is not only a huge fan but has a giant Helga Patiaki esque shrine to them complete with a cd player with shuffle. Fancy. 

We then get a wonderful, shiptastic montage of the two just hanging out, hanging out with a white tiger. Having themselves a party. And given the song itself, sung by 98 Degrees and horrible realtiy show Newleywed’s alumnus Nick Lachey, even says “we used to be enimies but now we have chemistry” yeah I think this is intentional and they are a good ship. Are they my prefered ships for the characters? No tha’ts kelly and flame princess... the last one was recent and I love a good crossover ship sue me. But I do headcanon both as still Bi and still find the ship great, it’s just not my main one. 

However the good times can’t last as it is film time... but Tom refuses to let marco leave befor eblowing his top off... dude that’s not how you build a suppportive relationship, you know this by now. Turns out the white tiger I haven’t mentioned to now is actually Brian, vocied my boy Stephen Root who apparently just.. lives at DIsney’s animation studios now as he has a tendency to show up in every other animated disney show. You may know him from Gravity Falls as Bud Gleeful, THe Mayor from Amphibia, or , in non disney voice work, Bill Dautrive. Turns out as I haven’t even tried to hide, Tom was in the final stage of his anger managment class and to get out of it had had to spend 3 hours with the person he hated most. As I said I do think part of it was GENUINE on tom’s part, that he was trying to be what he thought friends were... it’s just he didn’t get that Marco, if grumblinignly, probably STILL would’ve agreed if he were honest.  However.. it’s still a step up. While i’ts still a scheme, and his LAST on the show.. it’s more benign after the last two; Instead of being harmful his scheme this time is just “Bribe my worst enemy into hanging out with me and get out of anger managment” it’s still not quite right, but compared to the things he’s done with star, it’s an improvment and a sign he is changing despite himself. He could’ve just kidnapped marco again and forced him to spend the three hours.. granted this might’ve just been Brian saying, obviously no tha tdosen’t count, but still, instead he tried being nice and giving an apology. Even if it was for personal gain on some level, Marco’s words clearly got to him and he’s now trying genuinely unselfish tactics. It’s also notable since he spent the three hours with marco, and at least half an hour of awkarndess before it got all fun, WITHOUT getting angry or falling back on old stratgies and only beefing it at the end because, as i’ve established, he dosen’t get people.  So naturally tom gets mad.. while it is a sign he’s getting better he dosen’t do his trademark horrifying demonic EXPLOSION of rage... he’s still being petulant and sore over his failure is mad at marco for pritoritzing the tickets nad destroys them. Marco naturally calls him out, angry over him manipulating him to get some badge , as he puts it, calls him a jerk and a liar, accurate and the worst part to marco? “I WAS DUMB ENOUGH TO FALL FOR IT”

Credit where it’s due while I may not LIKE adam mcarthur as a person...as a voice actor he is excellent and his delivery here is perfect as you do get the pain in Marco’s voice as he genuinely ahd grown to care for tom. Wethere it was friendship or wanting to make out... probably wanting to make out, you get the pain in his voice. Tom admits the love sentence hting wasn’t a lie.. but too little too late.. whcih is marco’s second faviorite love sentence song and leads to another moment of shippy goodness. Seriously I see why this ship exploded in popularity after this. Also I will say both Adam and Rider have damn pretty voices.  So Tom does what any romantic lead faced with a third act breakup would do.. say a demonic chant and bring Mackie Hand back from the dead. This is also the first time we see just how fucking powerful tom is. Before we’ve seen him summon his carriage and immolate some stuff and easily reattach a hand.. but this is the first time that we see he’s every pit as powerful as star, who probably could raise the dead she just dosen’t want to. Granted I don’t know why this sort of undead stuff hasn’t been used on say, Moons assitnated mother, but presumibly anti-monster stigma combined with the fact that we don’t know HOW she died or how much was left, and are probably better off that way solve that. It goes a long way to explain why Tom’s family are allies instead of the conquered like most monsters: They have equal , if far diffrent and spookier, magic power and are the only kingdom with this trump card besides the butterfly kingdom. 

So as we close Marco tries to use Mackie to get in, the usher dosen’t buy it and a fight insues, but Marco and Tom patch things up, Tom becoming a fan of Mackie now he’s seen what the guy can do and Marco forgiving tom since, evne if his actions were still a bit greasy, he immidetly did his best to try and fix what he broke. The two are friends again despite them both saying they hate each other... but they clearly mean it playfully. The End.  Final Thoughts: After the Slog that was last episode this one is a fan faviorite for a reason... well okay 2 reasons. One...

And two.. it’s excellent. I feel bad it took me years to see this one, but it’s one of season 2′s finest. It’s funny, has great character stuff for both boys, introduces a new ship that’s fantastic and a great new dynamic between Tom and Marco that would carry for the rest of the show. It also beliviebly advances Tom’s character arc: He’s TRYING a bit but he’s still got a bit of the scheming and selfishness that defined his earlier outings, but it’s telling that after this episode, and hurting marco, he stops. This episode REALLY gets him to change that and for the better.  Sadly Tom would only make one more apperance this season in Naysaya, an episode I will cover when I cover Jackie and Marco at some point, but has him show up for a cameo when it turns out the episodes antagonist, a curse that takes the form of a sentient head that spills the target’s worst secrets and insecurities when they try to ask someone they like out, is Tom’s fault from back when he was a baddie, and Tom genuinely apologizes and tells him how to vanquish it, if ribs marco a bit since he cast that curse presumibly sometime between BMB and MCC and is delighed and suprised that Marco seriously hadn’t asked anyone out in that time. But it’s a nice bit that shows their not only still friends but Tom is genuinely sorry for some of his earlier behavior. We’ll see more of that as we go and more of tom trying to be better.. he’s made up with Marco, next time we come back to tomtrospective, we’ll see how it goes with Star. 

Coming up besides the obvious, as Pride Winds down I’ll have my first steven unvierse coverage, one of the first openly gay couples in western animation, and some asexula pride as we take our first look at Bojack Horseman..’s loveable rommate todd. Until we meet again, stay safe, black lives matter and later days. 

[someonefromthere]

Like I promised, there's another part! Though it's not what you wanted, probably, so I'm thinking about adding a few bonus parts here and there to the story. I wanted to expand the plot line, because there are so many ideas about these two in my head that I still want to write down. I mostly focused on The Feelings, so I hope it's not boring or rushed, or anything.

No need to read "red signs" before this, but I highly recommend you to if you want to fully understand the plot line.

This fanfic is also posted on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15481596

Warnings: temporary character death

Nines saw his predecessor cry only once, a long time before he’d deviated himself.

Connor and Hank were sent to investigate a crime scene – another homicide involving two humans and an android – leaving RK900 and his partner alone at the station. It was one of the days when everyone took a day off due to the sunny weather, planning to spend it with their families, and as always, the two duos stayed as the only ones. Fowler remained in his closed office, so Nines and Gavin seemed to have the entire bullpen for themselves. It was barely three weeks since RK900 model left CyberLife, and his relationship with detective Reed was improving slowly – very, veryslowly. It was the main reason of the silence that laid between them; the other was Gavin’s state of health. That morning, the man arrived grumpier than ever, with reddened nose and hoarse voice, and a huge headache. A quick scan told the android that his partner caught a cold and it was intact by medicines. Clearly, his human didn’t care much about his health.

RK900 prepared him a hot tea and made him swallow a bitter antibiotic – Gavin did as told, although not without complaints. A next superficial analysis showed that Reed’s body started to actively fight against the cold. His mission was accomplished.

S o f t w a r e   I n s t a b i l i t y

Their comfortable silence was cut off by Connor. RK800 model broke into the station in a rush – he was alone, Lieutenant nowhere to be seen – and though he tried to appear calm, his face and movement betrayed him. The android was shaking and looking around nervously, almost frantically, lips in thin line, hair messy and his brown eyes… glassy. Wet. Full of tears that streaked down his freckled cheeks.

He was crying.

“Are you alright, Connor?” RK900 asked, raising from his seat slowly. He scanned his predecessor, but the results were mostly good.

Stress level: 89%

“What happened, tin can?”

Even Gavin seemed to wear a face of concern. Interesting. The detective straightened his back and threw a glance at the older android. Connor looked at them, suddenly halting in the middle of the room.

“It’s Hank. He was stabbed.”

Stress level: 93%

Gavin stood up immediately, like thunderstruck. “I’m going to tell Fowler. Nines,” with that, he glanced at his partner, tilting his head at Connor, “take care of him. Calm him down or something, you robots have things in common. Use them.”

And he was gone, already in the middle of his way to Captain’s office. Nines’ gaze lingered on him for a while, checking his vitals carefully, before his attention was brought back to the smaller android. Connor had sat at the nearest desk – it appeared to be Anderson’s, of course – and started to wipe the tears off, however it didn’t do much; the fresh ones kept spilling out of his puppy eyes. It was a reminder for RK900, that his predecessor was a deviant for a longer period of time than he’s even been active.

He didn’t know what to do – he’s never been in contact with a crying person, and Connor looked like he needed comfort. It was… difficult to find a fitting reaction.

It took eleven seconds RK900 to put his hand on Connor’s shoulder. “Lieutenant will be fine. He’s a strong man.”

“Yeah, I… I know,” the older android replied, looking away. His gaze stopped at the glass office where Captain Fowler and Reed were having a heated conversation. Nines glanced there, too, to see his partner throwing his hands in the air, wincing, shouting and pointing at them through the wall.

“Then why are you worried about him? He’s in good hands.”

Connor was quiet for a prolonging moment. RK900 came back to staring at him and did a quick scan.

Stress level: 85%

“He’s… my friend. It’s a common thing, among humans, to worry about your friends.”

This made Nines think. He wouldn’t call detective Reed his friend; at least not yet. Their relationship was getting better, yes, but they were far behind Connor and Lieutenant Anderson, and the ease with which they communicated with each other.

“How do you feel about Lieutenant?” Nines chose to distract his predecessor by asking him questions and judging by his stress level – 82% blinked in the corner of RK900’s vision – it was a workable solution.

“I care about him,” the older android said, glassy eyes focused on his fingers. “And I would do anything for him. There’s a word that humans call this feeling, and I think it fits.”

“What is it?”

Connor looked up. “Love. I think I can call it love.”

Stress level: 71%

Nines wanted to search for the answers to the questions that all of a sudden appeared in his code, he was curious what love was, but the bang of the closed door snapped the androids’ attention to the approaching detective. Reed’s cheeks were painted angry red, his face decorated with a troubled frown.

“That fucker wanted a report from you, but I stopped him,” apparently, his words were directed at Connor, yet his eyes followed Nines movement as the android took his hand from RK800’s shoulder. “Told him you’re not feeling good right now.”

“Thank you,” Connor brushed the back of his hand over his face to dry it a bit.

“Not a big deal, plastic.”

Nines’ eyes felt glued to the man as he sat back down and reached for his cup, and to his beautiful grey eyes. A soft smile found its way to the android’s lips.

S o f t w a r e   I n s t a b i l i t y   S o f t w a r e   I n s t a b i l i t y   S o f t w a r-

One day the definition of love appeared before his vision almost without his consent. He probably searched it subconsciously during the analysis he provided on the files that he and Gavin got. Reed was back to work for a week now, his wound was healing quickly and didn’t hurt as much as it used to, and their developing relationship seemed to comfort him more than any medicine he was made to take. Nines was nearly used to catching the little smiles his partner was shooting him from time to time.

a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person

a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection

sexual passion or desire

RK900 felt a blue blush creeping over his cheeks at the last part. They didn’t get far past kissing yet due to Gavin’s injury, but the man’s hands had already wandered below Nines’ waist many times, and the android didn’t feel like stopping them. Gavin’s fingers felt good on his exposed skin, deactivated to show the man his trust, leaving hot trails wherever they landed. System overheating warnings often cluttered his view at those occasions, but he clumsily dragged them off his vision, too busy keeping Reed’s lips occupied with his own.

“Didn’t know androids could blush.”

Nines looked up from a photography of a murdered woman he had been holding to meet Gavin’s amused eyes. Recently, the detective seemed happier than ever – the usual frown was mostly gone from his handsome features, his brows straightened, nose not scrunched anymore. He smiled a lot more, too. Nines liked the thought that he was responsible for it.

“It’s a- It’s a simulation of human blush,” he cleared his throat awkwardly, though there was no need to. He tried to prevent blue from farther spreading all over his cheeks and nose, but he found himself unable to. It seemed like the blush was living its own life. Gavin sent him a smile which could be read as almost sheepish.

“It looks good on you, you know.”

Nines’ LED flashed furious yellow – he caught a glimpse of it in a glassy wall – and the android’s gaze fell down, back to the photo. “Thank you.”

The compliments still felt peculiar as well. There was something in them, something intimate, that always made Nines even more, almost impossibly, flustered. But if Gavin liked it, he didn’t see a reason to try and stop it.

^

The first time Nines said it, he was once again overwhelmed by fear.

He was going to shut down. He felt it, felt life leaving his limbs and flickering lines of code that frantically tried to start working properly again, but couldn’t. He felt the gashing hole where his Thirium pump should be; it laid hundreds of feet away instead, torn from his body and threw with force. His vision was blurred at the edges and filled with fuzzy stripes all over the front, the image of his human partner glimmering. Not complete.

“You’re going to be fine, Nines, you’ll be fine, you hear me?”

The android felt strong hands, trembling hands, around his head, lifting it up and putting on Gavin’s lap gently. One of them came to stroke his hair.

00:00:31

“Gavin.”

He didn’t want to die.

“Yes?”

They were meant to have so much time yet, so many days to spend together. He was going to learn all emotions.

He wanted to know how is it to feel them.

“I want you… to listen.” His voice came out weak and broken, but the look on Gavin’s face was far more than broken.

“I want… I need you to know…”

00:00:14

“I can’t fucking lose you now…” the man whispered, and his tone betrayed him. He was crying. It broke Nines’ heart.

00:00:04

“I love you.”

“Nines-“

He was abruptly wrapped by darkness and silence, and sudden calmness. Everything went quiet.

The touch of his partner’s hands disappeared.

^

He decided that hearing it felt so, so much better.

It was, in actuality, the first thing Nines heard when the words Reactivation completed showed up in his view. His sensors flashed before they started working again, his LED turned yellow, and then blue, and it all felt wonderful.

He was alive.

“I love you, you stupid fucking plastic prick.”

A hand clenched on his shirt yanked him forward and before he had a chance to open his eyes, his lips were crashed by the familiar ones. Gavin’s.

“I thought I fucking lost you for good,” the detective pulled back and his glassy eyes pierced through RK900’s. “You’re a piece of shit.” Another kiss, this time longer and wetter, and full of longing. His tears mixed with Gavin’s on their cheeks, but it was the last thing they cared about.

When Reed pulled back once more time, he was smiling as brightly as the sun. “Don’t do that again. Don’t you ever leave me. Promise me.”

“I promise,” Nines said and sat up on the metal table, wrapped his arms around Gavin’s waist and pulled him closer, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

^

A cloud of hot steam poured into the room as Gavin left the bathroom with only a towel around his hips two days later, hair damp. RK900 looked up from an electronic newspaper he’d been holding for over ten minutes and threw a glance at his partner – at the messy strands falling onto his forehead, at his reddened from hot water cheeks, his pink lips and still wet chest, a fresh scar of the size of coin on his side. His gaze stopped on the dangerously low brink of the towel. Gavin noticed.

“Stop staring at me like that,” he said with a laugh, reaching for his phone and sitting on the other side of his bed. Their bed. Nines tilted his head to the side shyly and said nothing, but the electronic device landed on the night closet. The android came closer to his partner, sliding on the soft bedding until his lips reached Reed’s bare shoulder blade.

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered into the skin, and Gavin shuddered, the phone suddenly forgotten as the man looked over his shoulder at RK900.

“I’m not a girl. I don’t need pretty words.” His voice trembled a bit, a sigh escaped his throat when Nines sucked gently at his shoulder blade. The android closed his eyes and took an unnecessary breath just to smell his human. Gavin’s scent included a mint shampoo of a certain brand and a maracuja shower gel, and something that only Gavin smelled of.

“I know,” he replied quietly. “I’m just speaking my mind.”

His tongue slid across Reed’s spine to his neck and remained there as he sucked a dark red mark on the side of it. He earned a shy moan, and locked his hands on Gavin’s hips, turning him around and pushing him to the mattress. His partner wrapped his left hand around Nines’ neck, the other making its way to the android’s hair and tugging at it gently. Nines pressed his mouth against Gavin’s right collarbone.

“You’re beautiful,” he repeated, moving to the man’s right shoulder, “handsome,” there came the breastbone, “gorgeous,” the left nipple, his teeth and Gavin’s very low moan, “attractive,” Nines let his tongue slide down to Gavin’s navel slowly. “Mine.” He felt the man’s excitement pressing against his own chest, but ignored it purposely, his fingers grazing over every scar they encountered on Gavin’s stomach, every trace of violence that was done to him, and pain that he experienced. Soon they reached the smallest and newest one – his heart dropped, and the android leaned in to cover it with the softest kiss he was capable of. When he pulled back, his gaze was met with grey eyes.

No words were needed as Gavin brushed Nines’ cheek with his hand, wiping away the little salty droplets that adorned his skin.

^

“Gavin?”

“Yeah?”

“Why do humans get married?”

Gavin turned around to face him in the darkness of his bedroom. Their bedroom. He also winced, displeased by the fact that Nines tore him away from his half-sleep, but RK900 knew that his partner wasn’t mad at him.

“Do androids have so many questions at night? Or is it just you, huh?” Gavin yawned, moving his hand to place it over RK900’s bare pale chest, just where the android’s pump, his heart sat underneath his artificial skin. The android would never admit it, but his human looked adorable like that. All sleepy and messy, and beautifully tousled.

“I heard two women in the park talking about marriage today. I was wondering…”

“They get married because they love each other,” Gavin looked him in the eyes. “They want to be together. It’s like a promise that obliges to death, or at least that’s the main concept. You know, “until death do us part” and that kind of shit. The whole vow and a wedding can actually be fun sometimes though.”

Nines proceeded his words cautiously, absentmindedly stroking the man’s forearm with his fingers.

“Will you marry me?”

“What?”

“Will you marry me?” The android repeated and got drunk of the amount of surprise and love that Gavin’s eyes held. “Will you spend the rest of your life with me?”

“You’re cheesy as all hell, Nines.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Gavin’s lips, as always, found their way to Nines’, and it felt lovely.

They both could definitely get used to that.

[mannatea]

would love to hear your full hot take on Voltron s7 if you’re inclined to share

there HAS been a lack of salt in general on this blog, huh??

all right, FULL hot take on voltron s7. spoilers ahead. salt. hate. don’t click the readmore if you don’t wanna read it. it’s a disorganized mess also. i’m tired still. s7 drained my ability to write well--sucked it right out of me.

god, where do i even start? the season started out all right. the gameshow episode was fun! but as soon as we returned to earth things went straight into snoozemode. i was itching to turn it off and go back to finish s3 of miss fisher’s murder mysteries, because i just wasn’t that invested in watching just a couple more hours of a new season of voltron. and this after i’d just recently marathoned s1-6 with my husband. 

i spent half the time staring at my phone. my husband was on his tablet. we complained about how boring it was aloud. we paused to talk shit about it.

there were a few good things, but it seems to me most of them were at the very beginning of the season. liiiike romelle. my husband was ready to set sail on the s.s. hunk x romelle which was incredible. acxa? also good. KOSMO? the best character in this series now, hands down. notice how little of the good there was in this season? hm.

anyway like i said, as soon as we had to see earth again i was bored. i don’t even know how to organize all my thoughts on this, but i’ll try.

flashback scenes for days. boring.

i’m not saying i could write it better but imo it would have been way more interesting to toss the characters into the situation without the audience having a clue what they were walking into. let them act and be overwhelmed with us? 

i don’t care overmuch about sam holt let alone his wife. at first i was pretty okay with them because i’m all for fleshing out side characters, but in the end it was all pretty meh.

idk he was just right about literally everything and could do no wrong. boring.

admiral sanda is one of the worst-written cringey characters i’ve EVER had the displeasure of watching. 

the only relief i felt in her character was that she wasn’t fulfilling the latino hotshot trope by being a young latino man instead of an older woman. 

but making her an older woman didn’t actually make her interesting.

in fact, none of her motivations or actions made any sense. 

you’re telling me this bitch is super by the books but she believes sam holt enough to spend billions on developing new tech on nothing more than his word? okay

if she’s so by the books she should have remained entirely by the books the entire time.

if she believes sam enough to spend billions in manpower and materials to build this shit she probably believes sam enough to trust in his judgment re: military tactics.

seriously i hated this character beyond hate. her little ‘redemption’ arc was poorly done. her getting a photograph at the memorial was annoying. 

okay, i can take the latter as the military keeping up appearances. don’t want the population knowing you were betrayed by the, or one of the, highest ranking officers in the military. that’d be a very big yikes.

i find it eXTREMELY hard to believe this lady did all this and only realizes she was an idiot at the last second. 

whaT do you meAN you aREn’T keePINg yOur eNd of thE bARgaIN?

I MEAN COME ON SHE’S NOT 23 AND BRIMMING WITH NEW POWER OR LACK OF EXPERIENCE!!!

in other words she can’t possibly be that stupid. nobody over the age of 25 is that stupid, especially someone versed in warfare, in a universe that supposedly had a WWIII.

SERIOUSLY I HATED THIS CHARACTER and for some reason it pissed me off more that she was a woman instead of a crusty old white dude. maybe because, aside from the MFE pilots, there weren’t really any other female officers named and important?

sendak was a disappointing anticlimactic bore.

seriously he was a case of the doldrums.

i don’t know what i expected out of him, but he wasn’t conniving or interesting at all. this is a guy who let his own ships blow up just to get at his foe. i find it incredibly difficult to believe he wouldn’t have just blown that defensive base to dust.

yes, even at the risk of losing a ship.

let’s talk about adam, another useless husk of a character.

kill the gays stereotype in full effect. usually it’s lesbians. i guess good job on it being a guy who dies?

i love how the whole fandom stanned adam and then not only was he dead as fuck but he was pointless as fuck.

voltron writers eagerly watching the audience, tails thumping in a poor attempt at suppressed excitement, bodies practically wriggling like a dog waiting for the command to eat the treat balanced on its nose: TELL US WE DID GOOD!! TELL US WE’re GOOD BOYS!! VALIDATE US!!! WE INCLUDED TEH GAY!!!!

like bitch...y’all gave this away in advance AND FOR WHAT?

you know why. YOU KNOW. i know. WE ALL KNOW. it was just to try and earn representation points with the audience.

i hate rep points more than i hate a lot of things right now. it’s just so cringey. it’s just showrunners trying to get points for being ~progressive~ while never having to actually stick to being progressive on a continual basis lmao.

don’t get me wrong, i don’t give a SINGLE fuck about adam. i’m just mad he was touted at a convention and then ended up meaning abSOLUTELY nothing. no, shiro looking at his memorial plaque doesn’t change anything lmao.

look i’m not saying it makes his relationship with adam ‘less’. but i AM saying that making him an ex and also a dead ex means the creators don’t have to commit to continuing to deal with shiro’s sexuality, whether it’s gay, bi, or pan. they can just avoid addressing it or writing it at all. because this isn’t a romance series. they just shove adam into a figurative and literal casket and want their pats on the back. which, uhhhhh they’re not gonna get from me. adam isn’t progressive. adam’s boring.

all the action in the last four or so episodes? dull. insipid. uninspired. i’m out of insults. i just don’t care about these mfe fighters. earth is almost wiped out. am i supposed to still be caring about it?

that yawn-worthy last stand speech had me wanting to take The Long Sleep like sendak cares if you put up a fight or not. you’re all weaklings. ‘we’ll go down swinging’ is as old as the hills. i don’t know what i needed instead of this, but this wasn’t.

there was a bRIEFLY good moment with hunk but like

how convenient that everyone’s families are alive lol

or at least hunk’s parents and lance’s entire extended family

that annoyed me idk. they’re going for this gritty shit where almost everyone is dead but then pull that?

ya lost me.

on the PLUS side the little scene with keith trying to be of comfort was nice. if anyone Gets It, keith does. and then he tries to help hunk too, which i liked a lot.

but it didn’t detract enough from the Boring of the episodes to really feel good to me. sorry.

hi i’m shiro and i’m sick. i’m so sick. the sickest. but i’m going into space anyway!!!

did i miss something or did shiro’s mysterious sickness just never mean anything?

did the galra cure it? that’d be interesting character stuff.

speaking of shiro, his hover arm is weird and i hate it.

what was with allura giving him her crystal thing? is that ever going to mean anything or was it useless too?

ATLAS is now a giant robot??? what

haha sam holt built this but didn’t know it could do this? don’t fucking??? pull that??? it makes me want to die. it’s so bad. it’s CRINGEY

he’s the enGINEER!! he’d know!! if it was capable of even 50% of that!!!

haha it’s magic

shut the fuuuck up magic needs to still be explained!!!!

where are the citizens and crew on this robot anyway like you do realize they’d be dead from the force of it moving around and probably getting rattled around inside the ship right?

they’ve got a massacre in the hold to clean up when this is over.

the super robot that was like massively strong and shit?

yeah let’s DBZ it up i guess and create antagonists that are exponentially stronger as if that’ll maintain the audience’s attention lmaooooo

it was boring and the reveal at the end with the altean was boring. who cares. i don’t.

i hated the attempt at a wholesome reunion looK IT’S TEAMWORK EVERYONE WORKING TO  G E T HER!!!! 

shay showing up to hug hunk WITH HER BROTHER was the only wholesome thing about it

i dunno it just seemed kind of forced to me. oh look how the paladins were lucky enough to keep their families!! what about the rest of earth. now none of the paladins can even really relate to it. it’s depressing. :/

i dunno. the beginning was promising! and interesting! and maybe even fun. but the earth’s last stand stuff was dull. i think because it was so rushed it lacked the balance of humor that has made the show worth watching. and there were cute fun MOMENTS in the later episodes of the season (re: kosmo, “i gotta get me one of these”), but it wasn’t enough to balance out how dull the rest of it was.

if there’s anything i missed talking about, let me know and i can add it/make another post. but right now this is my current salt. 

i mean mostly my opinion is:

wow that was a waste of my time.

[something-very-special]

Ask Response-stravaganza!

So I got a buuuunch of Asks in the last couple of days and a lot of them are spoiler-y by nature. Rather than hiding them all until I feel more comfortable addressing them (which won’t be for a couple of months, honestly), they’re all going under a big ol’ SPOILERS AHOY! read more break.

So here we go.

SPOILERS AHOY!

Anonymous: I agree that 2B and 9S's bond is mainly that of a broken family but there also seem to be a few hints at attraction there (e.g. the comments about 9S's heart rate increasing at the beginning of route B). Also, even though Adam's line certainly referred to "kill", the wording itself does carry some ambiguity and connotations that seem intentional - considering the hatred and love aspects of 9S's (admittedly complex) feelings, Adam may be referring to several things here, possibly all at once.

I absolutely believe the context was meant to be ambiguous. This is also why it’s really funny seeing how people reacted to it, and how they kind of project onto it. (And I certainly had the same reaction the first time I saw it, hah hah.)

I like to think that the censored word is actually a number of verbs all at once -- ‘fuck’ and ‘kill’ certainly aren’t the only two four-letter verbs out there -- which is why it’s censored the way it is; it’s an accusation of multiple natures, potentially meaning multiple things, open to a bevy of equally valid interpretation.

But.

In context of the story, whatever is hidden behind that line of asterisks is something that 9S doesn’t want to acknowledge. If it were something related to love or even lust, 9S has already proven that he gets flustered in such a context-- the aforementioned ‘heart rate’ response, and his conversation with the Little Sister. However, in conversation with Adam, his response is violent. It’s violent denial. I don’t think he’d be so aggressive if Adam’s main point had not been trying to stir up his more negative feelings.

So, in context of everything Adam may have said, and in context of what we as the audience could take away from it? I do believe ‘you want to **** 2B’ can (and was intended to) mean a broad range of things. But in context of what 9S heard? Not so nice.

Anonymous: thank you for your in depth thoughts about 9S. I found him to be really unlikeable at first and then somewhat tolerable by the end. but my final lasting impression of him was that he just unsettled me for some reason i could not pin point. With your thoughts, I was able to understand him a bit more. though he will still be my least liked character, i can't deny his whole arc is really thought provoking (also you mentioned that A2 was very underutilized, a sentiment I concur with whole heartedly)             

Oh, I’m glad. I know 9S can come across as being a brat (which I think is more of a knee-jerk reaction to his youthful design), and a racist jerk (which is definitely intended in-game, by his dismissal of the very concept of the robots having their own egos), but he’s definitely got a lot more going on. I had the fortune of accidentally tripping the Mother and Son quest early, so other than 9S being kind of a jerk toward Pascal the first interaction I saw between him and the machines was trying to comfort the little child machine, which was adorable and probably instrumental in my own opinion of him. (Made watching him go from “Shh, shh, don’t cry” to “I WILL MURDER EVERYTHING” pretty disturbing, and heart-wrenching.)

Yeah, A2 needed more love. I think I understand why she was kind of incidental, but still...

kantan-kt:                                                      Do you think that 9S died in route C? If you continue to route E, the pods tell the player that all yoRHa black boxes are offline. Doesn't that mean that A2's sacrifice was in vain? ;~;  But then again, he did stop his data upload to the yoRHa server so maybe there's a chance that he's alive?            

When you enter Ending E from the Chapter Select, it continued directly from Ending C, implying heavily that his black box was offlined. However, A2′s work seemed to be less about keeping him alive (which wouldn’t really be accomplished by hacking into him, since the damage kind of came from repeatedly stabbing him in the final fight) and more about retaining his memories and eliminating the logic virus the clone-arm imparted into him-- saving his soul, if you will, even if the body still died. Kind of ties in to the considerations of something greater than themselves, and the direct contemplation in a few of the sidequests about heaven, and whether they, as artificial life, would qualify for such a thing if it exists.

So even if you ignore Ending E and its possibility of restoring the three characters -- which obviously A2 would not have had any knowledge of, herself -- no. Even though 9S is also confirmed dead at the end of it, her work was not in vain.

Anonymous: On the BBE's Artbook, Commander talks about Jackass making an android combined from two other androids...Do you guess who they are talking about? 

I haven’t taken a chance to really look through the art book yet (didn’t want to spoil myself), but I’ve seen this mentioned and I have to say I don’t actually have a guess. I can’t think of anybody in the game, including sidequests, that would match this description. The only thing I can think of is her lamenting the death of ‘White’ on the bunker, but I can’t think of anything solid.

I look forward to somebody figuring it out, though. That’s pretty awesome, in a legitimately terrifying kind of way.

Anonymous: I thought about something and would like to hear your two cents on it. I personally find that 2B lacks character development, she barely says anything about her throughout the entire game, however, once you learn what her true purpose is, you have to look at the core of most sidequests in the game to (indirectly) learn about her since said sidequests are more or less related to 2B (and 9S to some extent). The "YoRHa Betrayers" and "Amnesia" are the most obvious that come to mind. Any thoughts?  

This is a two-parter, but the Asks split themselves quite neatly.

Regarding this, this is one of the things I really like about both this game and the original (and I remember hints of this in Drakengard, too). There’s plenty of clear development between the characters, but there’s also a lot of unspoken, subtle stuff. I’ve recently mentioned the relationship between Nier and the members of his party, and what’s really brilliant about it is that most of the interpersonal bonding is done without dialogue, or else entirely through subtext. The entire chunk of game from the fight against No. 6 to the post-fight against Kaine in the Lost Shrine is brimming with gorgeous body language and perfectly constructed dialogue that never feels the need to speak too much about what it’s trying to say. It requires-- I don’t want to say thought because it sounds pretentious, but it does require paying attention, especially for the relationship between Emil and Kaine (which turns out to be incredibly powerful even, what, 8000 years later, and I’m completely sold on it for this one hour-long stretch of game).

The same occurs with 2B. We’re introduced to her in a very mechanical context, and she comes across as being stoic, flat, no-nonsense. It serves a pretty good foil to 9S being the most emotional and ‘human’ of the main characters, but 2B herself isn’t emotionless. I marked this even back in the demo; she says ‘emotions are prohibited’ but becomes extremely worked up over 9S being hurt. Seems like a clear contradiction, especially when they ‘just met’, and given how generally well-written and strong the narrative is seems too contradictory to have been unintentional, especially for being right at the start of the game.

There are definitely hints and intrigue throughout, and these little bits from the sidequests and from her more errant dialogue and reactions paint a very interesting and complex picture, especially in conjunction with the “Amnesia” sidequest, which not only reveals the existence of the E-series YoRHa (which 2B dismisses, incidentally) but that they are highly psychologically unstable due to the rather grisly task presented to them. (That was all one sentence and I’m sorry.)

I quite like how her characterization was ultimately treated. It’s not overt, but there are enough indications of what lay beneath to make her at least interesting, and once you’re given full context about her nature it retroactively makes her more unusual decisions and reactions quite a bit more fascinating, and telling.

I was running out of space with my sidequest ask earlier, I thought about another obvious one that might be related to 9S? It's the "Confidential Intel" which ends up pretty badly, where some resistance member wants to build an S android since he always wanted a family, which can be associated with 9S wishes in a way? Maybe this is too far fetched but it all feels too coincidental that most sidequests share the same themes as the main characters' struggle, if that makes any sense?

Oh! Yes, actually, I completely follow. I admit I didn’t make that connection (although I did that quest with 2B so I wasn’t yet in the realm of familial pining), but it does make sense. I imagine something could also be read into the Resistance member’s desire to have somebody to protect.

...now that I think about it, I wonder if an E-unit was sent after them? The Scanner has confidential intelligence, after all, something that could be catastrophic if leaked, and while I interpreted his ‘p-please...’ at the end of the quest being a misfiring need to get away from his ‘family’, it might have been linked to their request: “Don’t tell anybody about us”, “Please”, because if somebody learns where they are the Scanner has to be eliminated, and his protector will go with him.

Got a bit away from the point. But yes, I think that’s entirely possible. Thank you for bringing it to my attention!